Demand gen has just gotten harder over the past 2 years. 

“A surge in competition for running ads, leading to a substantial increase in advertising costs, the absence of new channels and the  decline of existing ones such as Bing, have significantly limited marketers' options, making it harder to reach and engage target audiences effectively” explains Anshuman Sethi, Digital Lead at Zuddl.

But against this backdrop, 74% of marketers say that events are their most important demand generation tactic, no doubt because they foster direct engagement and deeper connections than a post on a social media platform or an ad on your feed.

So in other words: yes, you definitely should be leaning more into demand gen events, whether roadshows, educational lunch and learns, or webinars. But you can also be smarter about how you’re going about it.

With Zuddl, you can orchestrate and control all your demand gen events from one dashboard. This means you have easy access to tools to run your events, and data to optimize critical processes that influence more and better outcomes! Win-win-win.

Here’s how Zuddl makes it simpler for you to get more out of your demand gen events - before, during, and after an event—as well as between events.

(1)Before:Get more prospects to actually turn up for your events

Getting prospects to turn up for demand gen events is half the battle won. To help cut through all the digital noise, Zuddl enables you to do the following:

1. Create non-boring landing pages for your events: Reel prospects in with landing/registration pages that make prospects want to attend the event.

2. ‘Book’ their time with automated calendar blocks: Google-Calendar block it or it doesn’t exist. By automating a calendar block when they register for your event, you’re upping the probability of them remembering to turn up.

3. Keep your event top of mind by automating email reminders: And double-down on the reminders by sending them friendly email nudges to show up.

With these tools, influence higher attendee turnout for your events.

(2)During:Use real-time data intel + integrations to improve pipeline acceleration

Using different tools and platforms to collect and manage prospect event data makes it difficult to get a clear, full understanding of an individual’s use-cases, goals and pain points. Zuddl pulls real-time data from all activities and actions taken by prospects across the lifecycle of a single demand gen event, and across many events too. This enables your teams to do the following:

1. SDR teams can identify high intent leads easily: Customizable registration forms let you collect information that can help your team quickly spot which are ICP and non-ICP, and prioritize follow-up too.

2. Better follow-up with context from event engagement: Combining registration data with visibility into actions taken by a prospect during an event - for instance, a question asked, or a response to a Poll - can help Sales make their outreach more personalized, as it makes the prospect feel better seen, heard, and understood. It’s the difference between a “Thanks for attending our event” and “Here’s a helpful ebook that can help you with this challenge you mentioned during the round-panel session at the conference."

3. More timely follow-up too: Using an integration like Slack means your Sales or Growth team get instant alerts about when their prospects register and attend. They can then strike while it's hot i.e. connect  with contextual data in seconds and engage better - rather than send out an email days or even a week after the event is over. Conversely, this also means that your Sales colleagues know when prospects have not registered - an opportunity for a follow-up too.

4. Visibility into prospect activity in many events instead of just 1: Get a complete picture of the user journey across multiple events and webinars. Use this information to nurture warm leads or build pipeline within an existing account. 
   

Better intelligence = better follow-ups = more conversions. Click here to read how Zylo drove 46% in pipeline from their virtual event using Zuddl.

(3)After:Use analytics to improve the performance of your demand gen events

If you’re not improving your results, you’re flatlining. Zuddl’s analytics dashboard helps you analyze what's helping and hurting the performance of every marketing activity, from registration rates to email opens to collateral downloads, with which you can make changes to improve results. For example you can:

1. Optimize events and webinars for the right time and day: Look at the turnout rate for your events and identify which time/timezones attracted the most attendees.

2. Optimize event duration to boost stickiness: Using analytics, Cloudsmith noticed that attendees were only staying 30-40 minutes at their 1 hour webinars. They decided to reduce the duration and saw an immediate uptick in ‘stickiness’ and engagement. Read more about Cloudsmith's success here.

3. Track day-wise registration and engagement trends for better demand generation: Run smarter marketing campaigns for specific segments based on their area of interests, which you can see via registration and engagement at specific sessions, stages, and booths.

The takeaway: Demand gen doesn’t have to be demanding

Using Zuddl tools can make it easier for you to get more out of your demand gen events. 

✅ Attract net new leads by creating fun and exciting registration pages using the landing page builder. Use customizable registration forms to collect pertinent info     about attendee profiles.

✅ Keep your events top of mind and boost turnout by using automatic calendar block and email reminders.

✅ Optimize performance of your demand gen events using analytics to identify best day, time, duration and trending topics.

✅ Empower sales to interact with prospects and personalize their outreach with real-time and easily accessible attendee analytics.

✅ Use analytics and insights to create the right strategies to extend and continue engagement between events.